Caroline Leavitt's "Is This Tomorrow"

Caroline Leavitt is the New York Times bestselling author of Pictures of You, which sold to six countries, went into five printings, and was a San Francisco Chronicle Lit Pick, a Costco "Pennie's Pick" and a NAIBA bestseller. Pictures of You is also a USA Today ebook bestseller and is on the Best Books of 2011 List from the San Francisco Chronicle, Providence Journal, Kirkus Reviews and Bookmarks Magazine. It's also one of Kirkus Reviews Top 5 books of 2011 about the Family and love.

Here Leavitt dreamcasts an adaptation of Is This Tomorrow, her tenth and latest novel:

Ah, my book, the movie. As someone who has had numerous film options that all fell apart (for three days Madonna was considering my novel Into Thin Air as her directorial debut, and then she decided to go on tour instead! For one day at Sundance, Vera Farmiga was considering Pictures of You before she was offered an HBO series!) this question has special meaning for me. I actually wrote the script for my latest novel, Is This Tomorrow, and it made the finals at Sundance last year. (Close, but not close enough, sigh.)

But I haven’t given up! I want James Mottern to direct (he did this indie movie, Trucker, about a female truck driver having to confront the son she abandoned years ago that I loved, and he’s completing filming of a new movie with Harvey Keitel) and I actually know him and have been nagging/begging him to consider the film of this book. No big shiny Hollywood blockbuster for me. I want something nuanced and haunting. I’d love Natalie Portman to play Ava Lark, the divorced Jewish woman who moves into the 1950s unwelcoming suburb with her 12-year-old son Lewis. Lewis should be an unknown. (I want this to be his big, big break!) Mark Ruffalo should play Ava’s jazzman boyfriend because you could see why she’d fall for him, even as you can notice the danger simmering underneath. And for Rose, the childhood friend who has always loved Lewis, I would love Jennifer Lawrence, who conveys such emotion just by the way she tilts her head.

The only thing I might insist upon is that I want to play a waitress in the film. One of those pony-tailed, wise-cracking waitresses that calls customers, “hun.” If I can do that, I’ll die happy.

View the trailer for Is This Tomorrow, and learn more about the book and author at Caroline Leavitt's website and blog.

The Page 69 Test: Pictures of You.

My Book, the Movie: Pictures of You.

Writers Read: Caroline Leavitt (January 2011).

Writers Read: Caroline Leavitt.

The Page 69 Test: Is This Tomorrow.

--Marshal Zeringue